


Theta

by breccia



Category: Dragon Age II, Mass Effect
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:08:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breccia/pseuds/breccia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke and her siblings end up in Omega after an attack by Batarian slavers. As they build a reputation for themselves under Aria's rule, a storm begins to brew between two human gangs: anti-alien activists and human biotics who have fled discrimination on Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

They stars fell with them in dizzying streaks of light. Even at the time Hawke knew it wasn’t real, that her eyes were playing tricks on her, g-forces and compressed lungs and capillaries flattened to a single dimension fooling her eyes.  When she thought back to it, she could still feel the hard molded plastic seat and the safety bar across her chest. She could still see the points of light outside the escape pod turn to streaks of white light, drawing shapes across the sky as they plummeted through the void.

She remembered the feeling of standing on her legs again when they touched down; how shaky they were, how the fear she had compressed and hidden away deep in her bones burst out once the danger had passed, how she had thought she might never stand again.

Bethany said she made jokes as they fell. They fell and the stars streaked across the sky and Hawke made light of the situation.  _Typical_ , was what Carver called it. She couldn’t remember.

“I think you wanted to calm us down,” Bethany said.

“It certainly sounds like something I would do. Did it work?”          

“It made Carver mad,” she looked to her twin some distance back, his hands buried in a pile of rubbish electronics claiming to be merchandise. “He tried to out-smarm you but that was when the stupid navigation system shorted and sent us rocketing in the wrong direction.”

It had been a week. That was it. Only a week prior they had been halfway to a new home, a decent semblance of a family-unit, matriarch leading her bickering children across the luxury cruiser, and now it was a memory. It had become something to be spoken of in stilted, hushed tones. How much time was needed before they could speak of it without voices catching in their throats?

Hawke remembered Bethany yelling at Aveline. She had fought at the woman’s side through the Batarian hordes, had screamed for her to hurry as the ship burned red behind them and the alarms blared, had hoisted her into the escape pod and slammed the door behind them, but she couldn’t remember the stories Bethany told with reverence that first week after they landed.

Bethany’s voice grew low as she spoke of how Aveline had pushed against her harness, how she had broken from the metal encasing and clawed her way against hurtling forces, where dimension no longer mattered and gravity had no foothold, of how she forced a new destination into the pod’s system as they tumbled through space and set them on a path straight into the heart of a nearby station.

“Thank me later,” she had told Bethany when they took their first shaky steps onto ground, “once we know where we are.”

Carver was dry heaving a few feet away. Hawke’s legs were quaking. Aveline took a stilted step forward, her body battered and bruised and broken. Bethany sank to the ground, her hands touching the cool metal, her thoughts at once to what had been left behind.

“Omega,” Hawke said. Above them was the symbol, lights dancing between hues, a beacon and a warning.

Aveline followed her gaze. “Well,” she sighed, “shit.”

“Shit  _indeed_ ,” said Carver the next day. “That’s all Omega is. Shit. Shit on  _shit_. Shit electronics. Shit aliens. Shit food and actual, _literal_  shit, just –  _alien_  shit. Aliens shit, don’t they? Do they not have toilets? Is that what’s covering the streets?”

“Carver,” Bethany hissed.

A Turian stood nearby, his beady eyes intent on the growling human. Bethany grabbed Carver by the arm and directed him away. Hawke flashed her best smiled at the alien. His mandibles twitched. She had no idea what it meant. She hurried after her siblings.

Carver squirmed against Bethany’s grip. “What, like they don’t know?”

“Things are tense enough; let’s not go around making enemies.”

“I happen to feel strongly about the issue of not shitting in streets, Bethany. I can’t help that.”

Hawke was at his side. “The next time a thought pops into your head, why don’t you try keeping it there for once?”

They didn’t just stand out in the Omega markets, they were targets. Each cluttered stand, brimming with frayed wires and rusted scrap metal, was manned by increasingly indignant aliens. A Quarian had called them something that their translators couldn’t identify. A group of Asari fell silent as they passed, each set of eyes on them, monitoring their every step until they were gone. Three separate Vorcha stepped out before them, teeth bared and eyes bulging. Of course, three separate Vorcha had been easily intimidated back into the shadows when Hawke’s stride went uninterrupted, a hand on her Shuriken and her gaze steady and dark.

“We can’t live here,” Bethany whispered as they walked.

Both Hawke and her brother were silent in response. There were few humans in Omega, few  _decent_  humans, and they had spent their first night on the street, dozing off on benches and in dark corners, Bethany’s head drooping to Carver’s shoulder only to pop back up at the slightest sound, Hawke’s eyes heavy despite her insistence that she stay awake to guard.

Aveline knew Omega. “It’s a lawless station,” she had explained at the clinic the day of their arrival. It had taken hours to get in, and even then, Hawke had given up the last of her credits to pay for the treatment Aveline needed.

“We’d be dead if not for you,” Hawke had explained when she protested.

Aveline winced as the Salarian doctor examined her shoulder. “I was saving my own skin too, you know.”

“What are we going to do here?” Bethany asked.

“Well we certainly can’t afford to leave now,” Carver muttered, though his usual brashness was forced.

“We’ll have to find work,” Aveline said. “I’ll pay you back, Hawke, I swear it.”

The Salarian doctor told them to head east, toward the human district. “Not the nicest area,” he said, “but you’ll be safer with your own kind.”

After their first sleepless night, an elderly human couple offered the siblings floor space. Hawke woke in the evening to see her brother curled in a ball, sweaty hair matted to his forehead, lying in the corner of a dark, dank room. Bethany was upright, her knees hugged against her chest, her face hidden as though she were compressing into a single point.

“We need to find work,” said Hawke, though no one heard.

And so they began their walk through the markets anew, past the bemused stares of Asari, the hungry glances of Vorcha and Krogan, the dismissive hand gestures of Turians. No one was interested in human refugees.

Carver’s eyes were glued to the ground as they rounded a corner. They had passed a group of snickering Batarians their third day on the station. Hawke felt the surge pass through each of them, a static shock from finger to finger, as the aliens turned to stare. She could feel Carver’s anger boiling over. She could even feel Bethany’s quaking hands, righteous fury and hopeless grief roiling about in a great storm. She had never worried about her sister’s biotics before, but for a moment she wondered if Bethany would be able to control them.

Even as she tried to look to her siblings to calm them, to console them, to encourage them to not make a bad situation worse, all she could see were the same Batarians that boarded the cruiser, the same Batarians that promised a peaceful exchange of credits, the same Batarians that then began rounding up humans, the same Batarians that opened fire when the humans resisted, the same Batarians that stood over their mother’s body.

Somehow they all knew that they couldn’t let an ounce of their fury out. They were dammed and filled to the brim; any leak and the torrent would crash out.

The attack hadn’t even made the news, or at least, it hadn’t made the news in Omega. Bethany trawled the news terminal for hours that day, desperate to hear of what happened. “Surely others survived,” she said, a plea to the screen before her eyes. “They can tell the Alliance. They can tell them about the slavers. They’ll send someone to retrieve them!”

“It’s the Terminus System,” Hawke said, approaching her sister. “The Alliance doesn’t care. We’re on our own.”

“So they just get away with it?” her eyes were tired. Hawke could barely muster the energy to joke, let alone comfort her sister. “Mother is just – just  _dead_? That’s it? No justice?”

Hawke felt as though she were hoisting the weight of the world on her shoulders. All she could do was bring one hand to Bethany’s arm. The touch crumpled her. She tumbled forward, burying her face in her neck as hot tears poured down.

They wandered the markets for days. Sleeping on a floor became a reprieve from the exhausting world around them. Hawke watched her siblings closely. Both looked as though they had aged years overnight. She could feel the exhaustion and the desperation deep in her bones, a dull ache that was slowly taking her over.

After six days, they had a lead. Their first. The Hawke siblings weaved through the Omega markets, ignoring the stares, on their way to find a Krogan who was willing to hire humans.

“Today is your lucky day,” rumbled the Krogan from a dark alley. He was the first to give them more than just a passing glance in a week, and Hawke had to hold in her rising excitement. “It just so happens I’m looking for an enforcer  _and_  some new entertainment. I’d love to see a couple of humans try to keep my guys in line.”

“I could kiss you,” Hawke said, her energy returning, “if you weren’t so terrifying, and hadn’t also just insulted me.”

The Krogan smiled; at least, she assumed that was a Krogan smile. “We get shipments from all over the system,” he went on. “It’s our job to make sure all the identification’s gone. No serial numbers, no chips, no nothing. We gotta clean them and get them back out into the wild.”

Carver crossed his arms before his chest. “What kind of shipments?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hawke said. “We’ll do it.”

“Great. Maybe you won’t end up like my last guy.”

“What happened to your last guy?” Bethany asked.

The Krogan shrugged. “I shot him.”

They made their way back through the market toward the human district. They were used to the stares, now. Hawke even felt taller, stronger. They’d have work. They’d be paid. They could find a place to sleep, maybe even a place with a bed, and they could get food,  _good_  food. They’d have money enough to leave Omega and start a life somewhere else. Carver’s shoulders relaxed. Bethany’s fists were unclenched; she even managed to return a smile when Hawke caught her eye.

Bethany’s smile lingered on her lips even as the gang closed in. Carver noticed them first, his steps slowing. Soon they were all still, facing down a heavily armed squadron of Batarians. The shops around them had emptied. How had they not noticed? They were alone, staring into familiar, menacing grins.

“Humans?” one of them asked, his gun already drawn and aimed. “That’s the most promising mark we’ve seen in days.”

Again, Hawke felt the spark pass between them. She didn’t want that churning sensation deep in her gut, the ice-cold shock of blood, the metallic taste that crept up the back of her tongue, but it hit her and crushed her into the ground. The mere sight of them sent her nervous system spinning. She took a sharp breath in and tried to steady her hand.

“Hand over what you have,” the leader went on.

“But we don’t have anything,” Hawke’s voice seemed to originate from far away.

The gun jostled in the Batarian’s hand. “Well that’s too bad. We could always just take  _you.”_

Hawke’s memories of the fall to Omega were blurred sensations of motion and loss. Her memories of their first week on Omega fared no better. Thinking back on it, all she could recall was the raw pain and a handful of images flashing together in a confused and jumbled mess.

Carver was the first to move. The scene was like several overlaid images, each happening simultaneously, blurring together into color and motion and sound, its true time lost to Hawke’s memories. An image of Carver stepping forward. A plea from Bethany for him to stand down. A flash of the Batarians smile, that same damn smile they wore on the cruiser.

Hawke remembered her desire to speak. She wanted to calm her brother and the Batarians. She could see a possibility off in the distance, where a few clever turns of phrase might have diffused the situation. But she also saw the way the Batarians moved, how great in number they were and how confident, and the battle scars and blood-stained clothes that all suggested they did not take to compromise.

The same image of Carver stepping forward was overlaid with a stuttering image of Bethany pulling him back, of the first Batarian stepping forward, of angry words exchanged, of escalation, of the gun pointing at Bethany’s head, of several other weapons rising in synch, of the feeling that passed through all of them as the reality of the situation hit with a sharp crack, as they each understood just how far this altercation was going and actions turned slow and muddled, artificial, like scenes in a movie.

Perhaps Carver yelled something, perhaps she did herself, perhaps Bethany heard them and perhaps she didn’t. In that same muddled scene Hawke watched as her little sister suddenly burst forth as she swiped at the aliens, hot blue light flashing as they were caught in a flash of biotic energy.

Hawke remembered the heat of Bethany’s biotics and the sound of gunfire. She remembered the Batarian that was left standing after Bethany’s attack, the one who had avoided the blast, the one who still had the gun in his hand, and she remembered the way Bethany fell before him. She remembered her own powers overtaking her in that split second as the image found her eyes, as Bethany’s knees buckled and she slowly began to fall. She remembered how the image of her own hand, glowing hot and blue, overlaid with Carver’s cry, with the gurgling whimper of the last Batarian as he fell before Bethany had even hit the ground.

The images roiled together and sound turned to a steady pitch that rang through her head until all that was left was silence and that single Batarian on the floor before her, drowned in blood, dark eyes askew.

There were no images in her memory of how they made their way to the clinic. Hawke remembered collapsing into a chair, remembered how the Salarian doctor recognized them as they entered, the way his eyes widened as they fell upon the body Carver carried.

When she thought back to that time, through the hazy memories and painful emotions, she could only picture one night with clarity. Omega’s skyline was a smoky gray-pink, comprised of artificial light and industrial debris. She found herself high atop a decaying building overlooking the endless slums. Carver sat next to her, their shoulders touching. Side by side they sat in silence watching over Omega as it drifted soundlessly through space, the last of their family, until morning came.      

 


	2. A Proposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke, Carver, and Aveline receive a business proposition from a mysterious (and short) stranger.

“Should we celebrate, dear sister? Perhaps a place with clean water, where the wait staff might not spit in our food?”

Hawke laughed. “You’ll spoil me, Carver.”

“I’ve actually been using a pillow for the last few months. This must be how royalty feels.”

Hawke felt, for the first time since she last saw her mother, as though there was solid ground beneath her. The medical bills had been paid. Vorcha collectors disappeared. They had even managed to find an apartment of their own.

“It’s more of a closet though, isn’t it?” she had said when they first inspected it.

If looks could kill, Carver’s would have disintegrated. The Asari landlord glanced back to her. She smiled innocently.

“A very _nice_ closet,” she corrected. “We’ll take it.”

“I’m just glad to be rid of that Wren bastard,” Carver muttered as they left the docks. “I’m tired of pretending the weapons we’re helping him ship _aren’t_ going to be used on humans. I think I hate Krogans most of all.”

“What, today?” Hawke joked.

Carver ignored her.

“We still need work,” she said. “We’re good for a month or two but we won’t last without stable employment. I was thinking of asking Aveline. She’s got that cushy gig with Intersect.”

A Turian mechanic nodded as he met Hawke’s eye. She mirrored the curt acknowledgement.

“I hardly think shaking down aliens for protection money is _cushy_ ,” Hawke could practically hear her brother’s deep scowl.

“Well, it’s better than smuggling guns all over the Terminus System. But I suppose she’s not happy there, either.”

Carver scoffed. “Find me one human on Omega who’s happy.”

Hawke grabbed at his arm and pulled him close. He recoiled at once, squirming in her grasp. She looked up to him, smiling widely. “ _I’m_ happy, dearest brother of mine.”

He broke out of her grasp. “Stop it.”

Hawke’s amused smile was slow to fade. “Well, there’s always Aria.”

Carver shook his head. “She’s not interested in human help. You know that.”

They walked on in silence, passing the rows of technicians and mechanics they’d slowly won over while working on the docks. They had made a name for themselves. Wren’s operation had never employed humans before. Hawke wondered if the begrudging respect they earned in his dockyard wasn’t due to how few humans the aliens knew; perhaps they could have impressed the district by simply speaking coherently, or by showing that they knew which end of a gun to point at a target.

Karin Far, a Volus who once tried to scam them with a phony software suite, scurried behind his stand as they passed. Hawke tried not to smile. The Volus engineer learned a harsh lesson about doubting humans. Carver and Hawke easily made a public example of him, costing his business dearly. Putting him in his place earned them the respect of most of the remaining aliens in the district.

Nothing had ever come of the attack on their cruiser. As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, the incident was brushed even further under the rug. Hawke fought the urge to assign blame. Holding someone accountable for the deaths of her mother and sister wouldn’t bring them back. It wouldn’t help them rest. The anger would do nothing but grow inside her like cancer.

There were Batarians in Wren’s crew. Hawke swallowed down the visceral reaction she had the first time she saw them. She had to get over it; she couldn’t blame the entire race for the mistakes of a few. Carver twisted himself around it. She couldn’t stand the sight of his tense fists and angry stares every time they passed a Batarian. Soon his resentment spread to the Alliance as well, for abandoning them, for never acknowledging what happened, for allowing the slavers to make off with their human cargo.

As much as he said he hated the lawlessness of the Terminus System, she wondered if he would be able to return to Alliance space. The last time he heard a report of Alliance activity he left Hawke standing in the market, her arms full of scrap he thought he could turn into something useful. She didn’t see him until the docks the next day.

Aveline was waiting at the edge of the district. “Late as always, Hawke,” she said as they approached.

“Sorry,” she said. “Wren threw us a party. You know, for our last day on the job. He even baked a cake.”

“Right,” Carver said sarcastically, “and instead of candles he used m80s.”

Hawke smiled. “Cultural differences, I suppose.” Carver was not amused.

The trio started off toward the Gozu District. Since arriving in Omega they met every week at Yomi, a human-owned bar that boasted clean glasses and little dextro-levo cross-contamination.

“What are you going to do now?” Aveline asked as they walked.

Hawke glanced at her. “We were hoping you might have some leads.”

“I’m in the market for something new, myself,” she said, shaking her head.

“I’m tired of wasting my time and my skills making violent asshole aliens rich and powerful,” Carver growled. Hawke could see his fists balling up again as his anger rose.

“You should direct that anger to something that deserves it,” Aveline said.

Carver kept his dark gaze forward. “What, working for mercenaries like you?”

“I’m protecting people.”

“You’re _extorting_ people.”

“I’m _protecting_ them.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

Hawke wove in between the two as they walked. Aveline’s expression was dark, but she swallowed an angry retort as Hawke looked to her. Instead, she sighed and shook her head.

“Bit of a tit, your brother.”

Hawke held in a laugh, but had to turn to hide her smile. Carver’s grimace deepened.

They passed through the Xuzhou district, one of the nicer slums in central Omega, home to mostly Asari. The streets were lined with varying hues of blue, from darkest purple to shades that reminded Hawke of the Earth’s sky. Their presence was less interesting these days, and they passed through without incident, Aveline lamenting over their collective arrival at a dead end the entire way.

“I still think Aria is our best chance,” Hawke said as the lights around them changed.

“She wasn’t interested six months ago,” said Carver, “why would she be interested now?”

“We’ve proven our worth,” she replied. “We paid our debts and singlehandedly earned the respect of … well, of a certain percentage of the dockyards.”

“That may actually make it worse,” Aveline said. “You know she’s finicky. Maybe Wren’s on her shit list. That would put you two right at the top.”

“You don’t get anywhere in Omega without her blessing,” Hawke argued. “If we ever want to get off this asteroid, we need to do it through her.”

The lights above Yomi vacillated through several hues. Aveline and Carver kept their gaze forward, as though to meet Hawke’s eyes would be to agree with her sentiment. She frowned at them, though they didn’t see it.

“You know I’m right, we all--” Hawke tumbled forward mid-sentence as someone crashed into her from behind. Carver caught her by the arm.

“Sorry,” came a soft voice. Leaning against her brother, Hawke turned to see a young human boy scurrying off, his head low.  

“Rude,” she muttered.

The boy disappeared around a corner. Hawke was just about to turn back to her companions when a cry cut across the air. The boy reappeared, backing up so quickly that he stumbled over his feet and landed on the ground.

Before the boy emerged an armored figure, Blue Suns logo emblazed on his chest, gun drawn. “The problem with forced NFC hacking,” came a voice from inside the helmet, “is that it’s not just easy to reverse, but it’s _tacky._ ”

The words hit Hawke in the gut. Her Omni-Tool interface flashed before her as she tore through several screens, searching for her account balance. “How – he wiped all my credits!”

“Come on kid,” the armored figure said, pulling him to his feet. They were the same height. “I don’t wanna see that shit here. Have some class.”

The boy looked sheepishly to Hawke. The armored figure yanked his arm forward, swiping through interfaces as the boy watched, stunned. Hawke approached.

“There. It should be reversed,” he said to her.

Hawke examined her omni-tool. The credits flowed back.

“Get out of here,” the figure told the boy, letting his arm fall to his side. The boy stole another glance at Hawke and quickly scurried away. “Amateurs,” he said as the boy disappeared around a corner.

“Thank you,” Hawke managed to say, feeling at a loss.

Carver and Aveline flanked her sides. Half of her brother’s body was before her, guarding her. He glared down at the mercenary.  “Since when do the Blue Suns stop petty thievery?”

Hawke cocked her head as the mercenary removed his helmet, revealing a human face. He grinned. “I’m not with the Blue Suns,” his voice rang clear and deep without the helmet’s muffle. He looked to Hawke. “There’s a known security issue with the Nexus X. They put out a patch a few weeks ago. Don’t you keep that thing updated?”

She glanced to her wrist and back to the strange figure, unsure where to start. “I’ve been busy,” she said, her eyes stuck on the stranger’s armor. “Why are you dressed like that if you’re not actually with the Blue Suns?”

“It’s more of a, uh, costume,” he said with a shrug.

Hawke raised a brow and crossed her arms. “I thought you were a little short for a storm trooper.”

He laughed. “Archaic pop-culture references, eh? I think I’m gonna like you.”

“What is all this, then?” Aveline asked, standing tall next to Hawke.

“The name’s Varric,” he said with a winning smile. “I’ve been waiting for you to get here.”

“You were expecting us?” Hawke asked.

“You come here every Thursday.”

Carver took an intimidating step forward. Varric remained still. “What do you want?”

“I know about your work on the docks. I also know that you’re looking for a new job. It just so happens that I have a business proposal for you. Maybe we could talk over drinks? That’s where you three were headed, no?”

“What?” Carver nearly laughed, “you think we’ll just have a friendly drink with someone who appears out of nowhere, parading around in stolen mercenary armor?”

“He _did_ get my credits back.”

Carver scoffed. “Maybe he’s in cahoots with that kid.”

Varric’s eyes narrowed as he stared up at Carver. “Cahoots?”

“Yes. _Cahoots_.”

“I didn’t think people actually talked like that.”

Carver scowled.

“Hey, I saved your ass,” Varric said with a smile, “the least you could do is indulge me and let me present you with the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“I think that’s more than fair,” said Hawke. She could feel her brother seethe. Aveline gave her a concerned glance, but let it pass with the shake of her head.

“I suppose a drink can’t hurt,” she said. Varric’s smile grew.

 

 

Hawke never knew she had a taste for brown liquor before they arrived in Omega. It seemed that in its absence she grew fond of a memory she never had, of oaky scents and smoke-laced bourbons, to the point of placing them on a pedestal. Carver frequently fell into periods of deep brooding contemplation, thinking of the dark oatmeal stouts and chocolate brews he might never again taste. For her part, Aveline lamented the lack of hefeweizen. Together they took what they could get, hunting down what few human liquors made it to Omega and sharing in a round of shrugs before knocking back whatever alien brew was promised to “not kill them.”

Their mysterious savior had slipped something to the waiter when they sat down. Within a few minutes, Carver’s eyes were wide with glee at the familiar black bottles the waiter placed before them. He could scowl all he wanted, but Hawke knew her brother was now completely devoted to the stranger.

“It pays to know people,” Varric explained.

“So,” Hawke began, taking a deep inhale of the dark beer, “why the Blue Suns armor?”

“I had to infiltrate their ranks for a bit of information. I got what I needed, though they got wise to me pretty quickly. Apparently Batarians and Turians are a bit taller on average.”

“How did you get out alive?” Aveline asked.

“It involved my gun and a lot of Blue Suns falling down in front of me. I kept the armor as a momento. Plus, it’s great for freaking out kids who don’t know any better,” he chuckled. “What’s your story, then? I’ve heard a few different tales, but they all sound a little too perfect to be real.”

Hawke was reveling in the familiar taste on her tongue. She could almost picture an evening so long ago, vouching for her sibling’s age when they were accosted by a bouncer, waiting several hours before she finally asked them what age they were pretending to be. “We were on a cruiser set out from Earth,” she explained, “headed to Freedom’s Progress. Bad idea, in retrospect. Batarian mercs hit us right at the edge of Alliance Space. They said we could go peacefully if we gave up all our credits, but they were in it for slaves. No one on the ship was about to let that happen. It turned into a bloodbath. We fought our way to an escape pod, but it malfunctioned. Aveline here saved us.”

“She reprogrammed it on the fly,” Carver said, the beer giving him an oddly reverent tone.

“I had a vested interest,” Aveline said softly. “It’s hard to consider yourself heroic when you’re saving your own ass.”

“Well, we’d be dead if not for you, I consider that pretty heroic,” said Hawke. “The nearest station turned out to be Omega. We crashed through into some abandoned sector. Scrambled out before anyone knew what had happened. Apparently the area sees a lot of debris; no one knew we had hitched a ride in with it. Our fall into Omega wasn’t very memorable to anyone but us, apparently.”

“Holy shit,” Varric laughed, “so it wasn’t just a biblical allegory? You _actually_ fell to Omega?”

Carver rolled his eyes and took a long swig from his bottle. Aveline chuckled lightly. Hawke recognized the joke, but was stung with a bittersweet pang.

“It hasn’t been easy,” she went on, her eyes cast down as an image of Bethany flashed before her.

“I know,” said Varric, his voice deeper and more somber than a moment before. “Your story before you got to Omega is sketchy, but I have sources here. I heard about your sister. I’m sorry.”

A melancholy quiet fell upon the table. Carver fingered the bottle before him. A table nearby erupted in laughter. Plates clattered behind the bar.

Varric bowed his head slightly, eyeing his drink. “That’s actually part of the reason I’m here now.” They all remained still. Varric looked between them all before he continued. “You whipped Wren’s operation into shape and made a real name for yourself. You’re probably the first humans to get into the Ozu district and come out with your heads still sitting atop your shoulders. I’m putting together a crew; there’s a job that Aria needs done – well, we both need it done.”

Hawke was slow to respond, her thoughts still elsewhere. “And you think we’re your best bet?”

Varric smiled, though it rang hollow. “A couple of humans fall from the heavens and work their way up from nothing. I have a thing for scrappy underdogs and upstarts. Throw in some overwrought biblical imagery and who can resist?”

“What’s the job, Varric?” Hawke asked through a smile.

“There’s a gang that’s funding some,” his hands moved about before him, as if to pluck the best word from the air, “ _troubling_ groups. They’re also threatening most of my business, which happens to also be Aria’s business. She’s willing to fund it if I can convince her of its success.”

“I think you’d be hard pressed to find a group in Omega that _isn’t_ troubling.” Aveline said.

“You would know, working for mercenaries,” Carver muttered.

“I work for a security firm,” she said strongly.

Carver rolled his eyes. “You work for mercenaries.”

“They are a security firm,” her voice hardened with each word.

“ _Mercenaries,”_ Carver repeated.

 _“Security,_ ” she hissed.

“Look,” Varric interrupted, pleading with Aveline, “You’ve gotta choose the lesser evil when you’re out here, I know that, but you’d be a fool to give up this opportunity. More importantly, you’d be a fool to give up this potential payout.”

“I have no interest in undermining my own morality for some monetary gain,” Aveline spat. Everyone at the table sat straighter. “Don’t berate me for having a conscious in a world of criminals.”

Varric eyes were wide with awe. “God, you are _terrifying.”_

Aveline leaned forward. “ _Good._ ”

He held his hands up in innocence. “I’m not asking you to compromise your beliefs. You want to help Omega? You help Aria. That’s how it works. You could make a difference, you know. You get in with the power and you help change things. You get money and you stop being a peon stuck on the bottom rung. Your actions start to have an impact. Besides, this job isn’t as gray as you might think.”

“She does have a point, Varric,” Hawke said, setting her empty bottle down. “It seems like every group in Omega is a merc gang or an illegal smuggling operation. What makes yours so special?”

“It’s less what they’re doing and more where their profits are going. There are some new groups popping up around the Terminus; they’re targeting humans.”

“Targeting?” Hawke asked.

“Yes. As in, stalking, hunting, and _killing_. That kind of targeting.”

Aveline scowled. “Why on earth would they do that?”

“Beats me,” Varric shrugged. “The gang I’m after is known as the Novas. A sizable percentage of their profits have been funneling toward these violent groups. They’ve also been edging in on _my_ business.” He took a slow sip of his drink before he continued. “You’ve already had one run-in with them.”

“So you’re tempting us with revenge?” Carver asked.

“Revenge and _money_ ,” Varric corrected. “And power, of course. If we pull this off, Aria will be your new best friend. Well, maybe not _best_ friend. Or even a regular friend. But she’ll definitely throw more work your way.”

Aveline wasn’t convinced. “Right, because you and Aria are so close.”

“We are,” he said with a smile.

Hawke leaned back into her chair, eyeing up the other man.  “How exactly did you ingratiate yourself to Omega’s would-be queen?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Varric eyes flashed bright. “My sparkling wit and charm. Tell her a few good stories, throw in a joke or two, and she’s like putty in my hands.”

Carver frowned. “Why do I not believe you?”

Varric gave the young man a thoughtful look. “I only just met you, but I feel confident that it’s because you’re a _tit_.”

Aveline erupted in laughter. As the others turned to her she quickly pursed her lips together, choking down the amusement and forcing her expression to neutral. She cleared her throat as she picked up her bottle, hiding behind it.

“Come with me to Afterlife tonight,” Varric said. “I’ll introduce you to Aria.”

The trio was silent. Hawke and Carver exchanged uncertain glances.

“Come on,” Varric said through a wide grin, “what have you got to lose?”


End file.
